Your 10-month-old spends the majority of your playgroup session climbing andsquirming on your lap, using you to pull up to standing as you sit on the floor.

Your 18-month-old can’t seem to make up his mind. First he wants to go outside.Two minutes later he wants to come back in. A minute later he wants to go outagain.

Your 2-year-old isn’t ready to get into her car seat, regardless of your schedule.Her resistance and stalling seem to increase each day despite your patience andrespectful attitude. When you’ve finally run out of time and need to place her intothe seat yourself, she screams.

Your 3-year-old wants you to play with him when you need to make dinner. Hehowls and holds onto your legs. A few minutes later he hits the dog. At dinner time,he demands yogurt instead of the food you’ve prepared. Later he refuses to get outof the bath tub and get ready for bed.

What do these toddlers have in common? They’ve been left hanging in toddlertesting limbo. A No-Win Situation

The problem for children: It’s a healthy toddler’s job to test our limits. When wedon’t answer these tests definitively, kids can become increasingly preoccupiedwith testing. When children are stuck testing, they’re not playing, socializing,creating, learning, fulfilling their potential. Testing limbo is an unproductivedistraction.

Young children are extremely perceptive. When they are stuck in testing mode,they are aware that their behavior annoys, and maybe even infuriates the adultscaring for them. This is not a comfortable or healthy place for a child to be.The problem for us: Testing limbo isn’t comfortable for parents either. If we don’taddress testing behaviors calmly and directly, we can become increasingly irritatedand exhausted, lose our cool and feel guilty, dislike parenting, even resent and loseaffection for our child. Tests are requests, and when we don’t provide conclusive“answers” in our responses, we unwittingly provoke more testing.

Testing is like a mouse in our house. If we don’t notice it and handle it effectively,it’s likely to show up in other situations as well (and multiply!).

How to help: Testing is our children’s subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) way ofsignaling for our help and requires a clear and, preferably, immediate answer.Parents shouldn’t be afraid to be decisive and direct, because we can alwayschange our minds (decisively) later, which is actually excellent modeling. “Ithought about it and realized it’s okay for you to splash the water out of the pool.I’m sorry to have told you no.”

Whether we are at home, in public, or at the homes of friends and relatives,preventing children in our care from getting stuck in testing limbo is a profounddemonstration of our love. Here’s how RIE Educator Lisa Sunbury Gerber, themother of a toddler, articulated this approach in one of our recent conversations:“In social situations, especially where others may have different rules orexpectations, what helps me is to stay close to R and focused on her. Even if theother parent has rules I don’t agree with or enforce at home, I see my job asprotecting R and helping her to succeed in situations like this, and that meansstaying close and setting the limit... It is good modeling, too. She does understandthat in some situations and some places there are different expectations.”

Steps I Recommend1. Clearly express the limit: “I don’t want you to (or “I can’t let you” or “I won’tlet you”) scream right next to me while I’m putting the baby to bed.”

2. Acknowledge desires and feelings: “You want to stay here with us. You arehaving a hard time being quiet.”An acknowledgement can also come before stating the limit, i.e. “You want to helpme put the baby to bed. I can’t let you make noise in here while she goes to sleep.”

3. Follow through: Be prepared to take action — our words are seldom enough toease testing. “I’m going to ask you to wait outside the room with Daddy. I’m goingto walk you out. I’ll be there with you in a few minutes.”Following through might mean holding your child’s hands as she tries to hit,removing an unsafe object from her hands, putting toys or objects away, movingyour child out of a situation in which she’s stuck testing.If you hear yourself stating the limit a second time, you are probably waiting toolong to follow through and help your child follow your direction.

4. Accept your child’s negative response. Breathe, relax, let go, let feelings be.These feelings are not your fault or responsibility. They don’t belong to you.Releasing these feelings is the healthiest thing she can do, because they are almostalways about so much more than the situation at hand. You and your child must beable to let go and accept this disagreement so that you can both move on.

5. Reconnect by acknowledging your child’s perspective and feelings (again).Let her know through your emphatic tone that you understand the intensity of herfeelings — that you totally get her message: “Wow, you didn’t like that at all! Youseemed furious. You wanted so much to stay in the room with me.” Be availablefor hugs or cuddles and allow your child to initiate them.Handling these situations assuredly with empathy and acceptance will pre-empt thecycle and prevent them from becoming a daily occurrence.Screaming, yelling and foul language are tests that we cannot prevent. Our childrencontrol these actions. However, by underreacting we can deactivate these “buttons”so that children quickly lose interest in pushing them. It is still important to let kidsknow we hear the message in their screams and extreme statements like, “I hate thebaby (or you),” to which we might respond, “I hear the anger in those words. Bigbrothers feel like that sometimes.”